An investigation of public support for coastal adaptation options and public finance options in Florida evaluated stakeholder judgments and how they changed through a participatory engagement process. The study found that public finance mechanisms that imposed fiscal burdens on those who directly benefit from hazard reduction were rated as more acceptable than others. Significantly, visualisations and data on local economic damage and return on investment of potential adaptation options further increased acceptability ratings. The question of whether a development fee for (...) adaptation or any other public purpose supported by private funds is a legal issue that depends on a test called the rational nexus. One concern of this article is to explore options for such fees to cover adaptation to climate change. This raises issues about the potential conflict with the community-wide and intergenerational nature of long-term adaptation. We also explore the relevance of environmental attitudes using the ‘new environmental paradigm’ (NEP) scale and political party affiliation. Results have implications for infrastructure improvements that require public approval for financing. (shrink)

Influencing students’ educational achievements first requires understanding the underlying processes that lead to variation in students’ performance. Researchers are therefore increasingly interested in analyzing the differences in behavior displayed in educational assessments rather than merely assessing their outcomes. Such analyses provide valuable information on the differences between successful and unsuccessful students and help to design appropriate interventions. Complex problem solving (CPS) tasks have proven to provide particularly rich process data as they allow for a multitude of behaviors several of which (...) can lead to a successful performance. So far, this data has often been analyzed on a rather aggregated level looking at an average number of actions or predefined strategies. with only a few articles investigating the specific actions performed. In this paper, we illustrate and discuss a more detailed report the results of an exploratory analysis of CPS process data based on the specific actions performed.log-files that is aimed at distinguishing between students that applied the correct strategy to a problem but failed to solve it and those applying the strategy successfully. In that, the sequence of behavior displayed is reduced to interpretable parts (n-grams) that allow searching for meaningful differences between the two groups of students. This level of analysis allows finding previously undefined or unknown patterns within the data and increases our understanding of the processes underlying successful problem -solving behavior even further. (shrink)

This paper is about the first (L1) and second language (L2) skills of Turkish-German dual language learners (DLLs), the interrelatedness of the L1 and L2 skills, and their relation to other selected child and family variables. The first aim of the study was to examine L1 and L2 performance and the relation between the languages. Second, the study sought to explore the conditions in which functioning dual language development can be achieved, while trying to predict the extent to which child (...) and environmental factors are related to the DLLs’ language competencies. L1 and L2 language skills of N = 69 bilingually developing 3- to 5-year-old Turkish-German children were assessed via standardized tests. In addition, information on the children’s sociodemographic variables and home language environments was obtained by means of parental questionnaires. Correlational analyses were used to examine the interrelations between L1 and L2 skills and multiple regression analyses were conducted in order to predict the children’s language competencies. The children showed age-appropriate language skills in L1 (Turkish) and lower language skills in L2 (German). Whereas their phonological memory abilities were positively correlated with L1 and L2 skills, their expressive vocabulary in L1 was negatively correlated with L2 skills. Our findings also indicated that phonological memory was a strong predictor of language abilities. Concerning family variables, both early daycare entry and stimulating home language environment were significant predictors of better L2 skills. Lastly, balanced use of both languages at home had no negative consequences on language competencies. Although more research is needed, this study shows the benefits of using a combined language measure including both L1 and L2 skills to predict DLLs’ language competencies without disregarding either of their languages. (shrink)

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of (...) small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model – based on self-interest – fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral variability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life. Key Words: altruism; cooperation; cross-cultural research; experimental economics; game theory; ultimatum game; public goods game; self-interest. (shrink)

Subjects enrolled in studies testing high risk interventions for incurable or progressive brain diseases may be vulnerable to deficiencies in informed consent, such as the therapeutic misconception. However, the definition and measurement of the therapeutic misconception is a subject of continuing debate. Our qualitative pilot study of persons enrolled in a phase I trial of gene transfer for Parkinson disease suggests potential avenues for both measuring and preventing the therapeutic misconception. Building on earlier literature on the topic, we developed and (...) tested an interview guide that focuses on how the subjects decided to participate, emphasizing the integration of subjects’ various statements that are relevant to assessing the therapeutic misconception, rather than evaluating them as isolated statements. The results indicate that a subject’s understanding of the purpose of research is best explored in juxtaposition to the subject’s motivation for participating. (shrink)

We would like to thank the commentators for their generous comments, valuable insights and helpful suggestions. We begin this response by discussing the selfishness axiom and the importance of the preferences, beliefs, and constraints framework as a way of modeling some of the proximate influences on human behavior. Next, we broaden the discussion to ultimate-level (that is evolutionary) explanations, where we review and clarify gene-culture coevolutionary theory, and then tackle the possibility that evolutionary approaches that exclude culture might be sufficient (...) to explain the data. Finally, we consider various methodological and epistemological concerns expressed by our commentators. (shrink)

Bioethicists have long been concerned that seriously ill patients entering early phase (‘phase I’) treatment trials are motivated by therapeutic benefit even though the likelihood of benefit is low. In spite of these concerns, consent forms for phase I studies involving seriously ill patients generally employ indeterminate benefit statements rather than unambiguous statements of unlikely benefit. This seeming mismatch between attitudes and actions suggests a need to better understand research ethics committee members’ attitudes toward communication of potential benefits and risks (...) of early phase studies to potential subjects. We surveyed the members of two U.S. research ethics committees using a phase I gene transfer study scenario, and compared the results to a previous survey of potential subjects’ perceptions and attitudes toward benefit and risk for the same protocol. The results show that there is indeed a gap between the subjects’ perceptions and the committee members’ views on what is appropriate to be communicated to research subjects. This discrepancy is the product of both the commonly assumed optimism of the subjects and to a “protective pessimism” of the research ethics committee members. We discuss this discrepancy using “frameworks of trust” and demonstrate the need to incorporate these frameworks into the existing model of informed consent. (shrink)

Negative acknowledgement is an impression management technique that uses the admission of an unfavourable quality to mitigate a negative response. Although the technique has been clearly demonstrated, the underlying process is not well understood. The current research identifies a key mediator and moderator while also demonstrating that the effect extends beyond the specific acknowledged domain to the overall evaluation of a target object. The results of study 1 indicate that negative acknowledgement works through mitigating negatively valenced cognitive responses. People who (...) are presented with a negative acknowledgement are less likely to counterargue when forming an evaluation. The results of study 2 reveal that individual differences in need for structure impact the effectiveness of the technique. People who are high in need for structure are more susceptible to the effect presumably because of their desire for easy-to-use information that aids the formation and maintenance of simple knowledge structures. (shrink)

Master Sorai's Responsals was to eighteenth-century Japan what The Prince was to Renaissance Italy. Like Machiavelli, Ogyu Sorai was a humanist scholar who served a prince and drew on his experiences as a house philosopher and on his vast knowledge of history and political affairs in his work. In 1720, when he began to write the letters that comprise this text, the Tokugawa regime was more than a hundred years old and beset with grave administrative and fiscal problems, about which (...) Sorai had much to say.Samuel Yamashita's impressive translation of this work offers modern readers a rare glimpse of the prevailing political discourse of the day and the specific concepts that rulers had at their disposal as they struggled to manage their domains, find talented men for their bureaucracies, create new sources of revenue, and keep their subjects well fed and happy.Sorai himself, of course, is a presence in the text. He is by tunes earnest, frank, impatient, utterly confident, and occasionally condescending. Unlike his Renaissance counterpart, he is something of an optimist: he was convinced that the introduction of archaic Chinese culture and institutions to Japan would solve its myriad problems.Well-versed in Chinese history, philosophy, religion, medicine, and belles lettres, Sorai holds forth on everything from archaic Chinese divination to Sung poetry and prose. He offers advice on how to become a Confucian gentleman, how to learn to read classical Chinese, and which books to read and which to avoid. He even discusses his belief in a sentient, Chinese-style "heaven," a topic not well understood by modern scholars. Long regarded as one of Sorai's best works, Master Sorai's Reponsals bristles with the sharp and clear opinions of the most influential thinker of Tokugawa Japan. (shrink)

Yarkoni's analysis clearly articulates a number of concerns limiting the generalizability and explanatory power of psychological findings, many of which are compounded in infancy research. ManyBabies addresses these concerns via a radically collaborative, large-scale and open approach to research that is grounded in theory-building, committed to diversification, and focused on understanding sources of variation.

Frank Kermode is one of our most distinguished and beloved critics of English literature. Here, he contributes a new epilogue to his collection of classic lectures on the relationship of fiction to age-old concepts of apocalyptic chaos and crisis. Prompted by the approach of the millennium, he revisits the book which brings his highly concentrated insights to bear on some of the most unyielding philosophical and aesthetic enigmas. Examining the works of writers from Plato to William Burrows, Kermode shows (...) how they have persistently imposed their "fictions" upon the face of eternity and how these have reflected the apocalyptic spirit. Kermode then discusses literature at a time when new fictive explanations, as used by Spenser and Shakespeare, were being devised to fit a world of uncertain beginning and end. He goes on to deal perceptively with modern literaturewith "traditionalists" such as Yeats, Eliot, and Joyce, as well as contemporary "schismatics," the French "new novelists," and such seminal figures as Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett. Whether weighing the difference between modern and earlier modes of apocalyptic thought, considering the degeneration of fiction into myth, or commenting on the vogue of the Absurd, Kermode is distinctly lucid, persuasive, witty, and prodigal of ideas. (shrink)

Daniel H. Frank - The Book of Job in Medieval Jewish Philosophy - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.2 318-319 Robert Eisen. The Book of Job in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. xii + 324. Cloth, $55.00 Robert Eisen has written a very good book on medieval philosophical interpretations of the Book of Job. In it he discusses the varying interpretations of Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, Samuel (...) Ibn Tibbon, Zerahiah Hen, Gersonides, and Simon ben Zemah Duran. For readers of this journal, the aforementioned, with the exception of Maimonides and possibly Gersonides, may be just names, but in the context of medieval Jewish philosophy they together present a wonderful discussion.. (shrink)

Daniel H. Frank - Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.2 263-264 Book Review Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority J. Samuel Preus. Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xvi + 228. Cloth, $54.95. This book is the history of ideas at its best. In lesser hands, volumes in the genre tend to be reductionist (...) to the point of redundancy and irrelevance, forcing the reader to wonder about the originality of the thinker under discussion and the ideas in question. If the relevant ideas are no more than those of others, then why should one take an interest in them ? Accounting for originality and genius bedevils the history of ideas. Preus is well aware of the problem of reductionism and redundancy throughout his book and works hard to show how Spinoza is.. (shrink)

Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694) hat in "De jure naturae et gentium", dem wichtigsten Lehrbuch des Naturrechts seiner Epoche, seine Doktrinen von der persona moralis und von der Soziabilität des Menschen ausführlich dargestellt und sie philosophisch, theologisch und historisch begründet. Diese Theorien, die für die Sittlichkeit der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft in der Frühaufklärung grundlegend sind, werden - nicht ohne Spannung - eingebaut in eine Staatslehre, die am Konzept der Souveränität ausgerichtet ist. Es gab vor Immanuel Kant in Deutschland keinen Juristen und Philosophen, (...) der politisch zentrale Begriffe wie Natur- und Menschenrecht, moralische Person und Toleranz so gründlich und so wirkmächtig bestimmt hat. An Pufendorf zu erinnern, stärkt die eigenen Traditionen. Rechtsstaatlichkeit muss so nicht als Belehrung von außen, sondern kann als autochthone, und somit als natürliche Rechtsform aufgefasst werden - es gibt keine stärkeren Argumente für die Stabilität des Rechts, als wenn Naturrecht, regionales Recht und geschichtliches Recht zusammenfallen. Frank Böhling legt in seinem Materialienband neben detailreichen Beiträgen zu Pufendorfs Biographie nun den Stellenkommentar zu den von ihm edierten acht Büchern dieses Werkes (Bände 4.1 und 4.2 unserer Ausgabe) vor. Ergänzt durch ausführliche Indizees. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Preamble The case of proper names The difference principle The ‘within a world’ version of the argument using the difference principle Sentences containing “actual” and “actually” Demonstrative adjectives Natural kind terms A passing comment on centering Where to from here?

This chapter contains sections titled: One spaceism versus two spaceism: setting the scene Two spaceism and ir‐content Which label: “epistemic” or “conceptual”? Which possibilities, precisely, are the ones two spaceism holds are conceptually possible but metaphysically impossible? How working with the bigger canvass raises some of the same questions over again Why two spaceism is not a happy home for anti‐reductionists Where to from here?

This chapter contains sections titled: One spaceism versus two spaceism: setting the scene Two spaceism and ir‐content Which label: “epistemic” or “conceptual”? Which possibilities, precisely, are the ones two spaceism holds are conceptually possible but metaphysically impossible? How working with the bigger canvass raises some of the same questions over again Why two spaceism is not a happy home for anti‐reductionists Where to from here?

Study of the diplomacy between the Carolingians and the ʿAbbāsids has been hampered by the absence of any sources from the Caliphate commenting on their relationship. This paper identifies two variants of the Arabic Tiburtine Sibyl, apocalyptic prophecies composed by Syriac Christians in the early ninth century, that provide contemporary Arabic references to contact between Charlemagne and Hārūn al-Rashīd. In doing so, they shed new light on this diplomatic activity by indicating that it was considerably more important for the Caliph (...) than normally appreciated. Combined with other references to the Franks in Arabic apocalyptic of the period, the evidence of these Sibyls suggests that Hārūn al-Rashīd accrued considerable prestige from his reception of Charlemagne’s envoys and the gifts that they brought with them. (shrink)

Two articles by Lewis Feuer caught my attention in the '40s when 1 was wondering, asa student physicist, about the relations of physics to philosophy and to the world in turmoil. One was his essay on 'The Development of Logical Empiricism' (1941), and the other his critical review of Philipp Frank's biography of Einstein, 'Philosophy and the Theory of Relativity' (1947). How extraordinary it was to find so intelligent, independent, critical, and humane a mind; and furthermore he went further, (...) as I soon realized when I looked for his name on other publications. I recall arguing with myself over his exploration of 'Indeterminacy and Economic Development' (1948), and even more when I read his 'Dialectical Materialism and Soviet Science' (1949). More papers, and then the fascinating, sometimes irritating, always insightful, books. His monograph on Psychoanalysis and Ethics 1955, the beautiful sociological and humanist study of Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism (1958), his essays on 'The Social Roots of Einstein's Theory of Relativity' (1971) together with the book on Einstein and the Genera tions of Science (1974), the splendid reader from the works of Marx and Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy (1959) which was a major text of the '60s, the stimulating essays on the social formation which seems to have been required for a modern scientific movement to develop, set forth most convincingly in The Scientific Intellectual (1963). (shrink)

The symposium, with which the present issue of SCE is concerned, concluded with a frank and probing discussion about the future of theological ethics. It is the purpose of this final contribution to provide a sense of the character of that debate.

"Der Beitrag verhandelt den Begriff des Muts und beginnt diese Verhandlung ausgehend von der Frage, wie eine Kategorie, die die Geschichte der Philosophie zu durchziehen scheint, gegenwärtig an Relevanz und Einfluss verlieren kann. Er identifiziert den Grund dafür in der aristotelischen Bestimmung des Muts als männlich-militärischer Tugend und setzt dieser Bestimmung in der Folge eine Neubestimmung entgegen, die zu denken versucht, was weiblicher Mut sein kann. The paper discusses the concept of courage, starting from the question of how it is (...) possible that a category, which seems to permeate the history of philosophy, currently loses its relevance and influence. It identifies the rea- son for this in the Aristotelian definition of courage as a male and military virtue, and subsequently confronts it with a new definition, trying to imagine what female courage could be like. ". (shrink)

This book locates the paradoxical process of collecting (as an activity that necessarily involves displacement and dispersal) in the ways nineteenth- and twentieth-century German-language literature (and in one case, cinema) attempts to represent ephemeral, discarded, and trivial things.

Identifies, analyzes and critiques the philosophy's conceptual structure and theoretical groundwork.